


It Begins in Istanbul

by Diminua



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4474676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronson didn't die. Someone was there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It begins in Istanbul, and this is how: a dark staircase and darker corridor, doors and shutters closed against the bright of the day outside. A young man with a scruffy beard tracking where the cry of English voices comes from, the still, steady complaint of another voice, lower, a man behind the door, inside the room. Moving and facing away and then, more clearly, moving back. 

‘I need to stabilise Ronson.’ Someone hurt then. Seriously so. Police or military if they're using surnames. Probably the same outfit whose wifi he’d picked up two nights ago. He’d considered nosing at it, abandoned the idea. He’s not a teenager anymore, doing stupid things just because he’s clever. 

He backs slowly as the shadows move across the floor. The man who said he was staying with his colleague has apparently changed his mind. Or had it changed for him. 

Not police then. Military. 

The handle of the door behind his back turns smoothly, quietly, gap widening into darkness as he presses against the wood of it, slips through without looking. He’s checked this one before, just in case. A small cupboard, floor uncluttered. 

Footsteps hurry past to the front of the building. Out into the heat and dust. 

He could run, at this point, before his curiosity gets him in trouble, but he already knows there’s a man injured. Instead he plays the innocent, calls down the corridor ahead of himself. 

_‘Merhaba?’_

It sounds jagged, wrong in his accent, and he’s not even sure it’s the right word in the circumstances, but his clothes are generic, he’s tanned dark enough. There’s the unclipped beard that’s grown in the last month. He can pretend to be a local until he knows if it’s safe to be British. 

It’s an unnecessary worry, the only man still alive is clearly helpless. 

This is Ronson, presumably, seated in an armchair facing the door, eyelids almost too heavy to raise over unfocussed eyes. One arm folded feebly up in an attempt to keep a cloth pressed to his chest, unable to find the strength to staunch the wound. 

The room reeks of the blood on floor and walls, slick, dark splashes on the paintwork, hideous brightness in one vast puddle. The one in which the dead man is lying. 

He must be dead, with that injury to his head.

Flies are collecting around the edges like bathers on a beach, children with a milkshake. As greedy for blood as they are for anything else. 

If he had time Emre would vomit. Instead he occupies himself with pressing the rag to Ronson’s wound. Here is something to focus on. The man in the suit. Another Brit, probably, judging from his complexion. Either just arrived or too fair to tan. Blue eyes still aware beneath those heavy lids, but with a terrible listlessness to them. 

With his free hand Emre extracts his mobile and dials. He has the address, knows the word for ambulance, it should not be too difficult to be understood. 

Is easy, in fact, the woman who answers the phone asks few questions and simple, picking up on his lack of fluency. 

Still he continues to murmur in Turkish to the man he is trying to save. A man whose eyes are glazed, as though the thinnest possible thread is keeping him attached to this world, but who finally moves and places his hand over Emre’s own as it tries to stop the blood flowing away.

 _‘Merhaba.’_ He mutters it low, keen not to attract attention, wondering if Ronson can even hear him. _‘Adim Emre.’_ To his own ears he sounds like a seven year old child in its first French class: Bonjour! Je m’appelle! Hello, My name is.

‘Adam.’ The faintest of murmurs in a Home Counties accent. Slight hint of the fens, possibly, in the softening of the a sound. It’s clearly the only word in what has just been said to him that he thinks he might understand. 

Emre gives up on his pretence at being local. It’s too important to keep Ronson awake. Listening. Talking if possible. 

‘It’s Emre actually. Adim means ‘My name is’.’ 

‘Emre.’ Or possibly ‘Emery’; the sound is too faint for him to be sure what has been said. 

‘That’s right. My mother’s choice. Her parents are Turkish.’ Information of zero interest right now, but that’s not the point. The point is to keep Ronson conscious. ‘She lives in Oxford. Lectures in Middle Eastern sculpture. Starts every year by explaining to her students why Middle Eastern is an imprecise and unacademic term. Still, at least they only have to listen to it once.’ 

Ronson blinks, slow, disorientated. ‘Stay awake.’ Emre instructs, pushing as much authority into his voice as he can. ‘There’s an ambulance coming.’ He hasn’t, actually, any experience of the health service in Istanbul. Or even the ambulance at home, wonders if he’s being foolishly optimistic to think they might get here while the man in the suit is still breathing. 

But it’s not the ambulance that arrives first, it’s a rush of pounding feet and English voices, bursting into the room, flinging instructions at one another and him, unstrapping a stretcher, setting down and unlocking what looks like a portable fridge. More blood hopefully. Painkillers or plasma or something. 

It’s a relief of course, but he doesn’t know why he has to have guns pointed at him at the same time. 

‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ There’s a sergeant major type in khaki. Of course there is. 

‘The man who’s been applying pressure to your friend’s wound for the last five minutes.’ Emre snaps back. ‘And learn the language.’ Still he lets a young man in white take his place, steps back as other bodies crowd around, organising a transfusion, talking to Ronson in quick, businesslike voices. 

It is a relief that they’re here, despite the shouting. Emre suddenly isn’t sure he could have done it much longer. Standing seems to have made him light headed. The smell of blood is really very cloying.

‘I still need you to tell me who you are sir.’ _Sir_ now, he notices. It seems an odd thing to notice when he isn’t sure what he’s actually being asked. 

It really is extraordinarily hot in here for a room with the blinds closed. His shirt is sticking to him. 

‘I called an ambulance.’ Because that is the important answer. ‘But you came instead. Should I..’ 

Later, when he is well again, he will realise how foolish it was to reach in his pocket for his phone in front of these people with their guns.

Fortunately his face gives them a far clearer picture of his current state than he has himself. Hands help ease him down to the floor as his legs give up, and someone pushes a small cardboard basin in his direction in case he wants to vomit. 

‘Emre.’ It’s cooler on the floor, or perhaps some physical mechanism has kicked in. The sweat on his forehead seems chilled enough to help him think. ‘I’m Emre Marwick. I’m an IT graduate, and I’m currently taking a break from my Phd to visit my grandparents.’

‘And your grandparents live in Istanbul.’

‘Actually no, I came into the city to spend a couple of days..’ It takes him a second to define, and when he does, it sounds weak. ‘being a tourist.’ 

‘Do you have a camera?’ They want to check his photographs, he supposes, see if he has taken any tourist snaps.

‘No, just my phone. And a tablet computer upstairs.’ He hands the phone over. It's been modified of course, cracked wide open, but there's nothing obviously odd about it. 

‘You’re staying in this building?’

‘There are small flats – studios really - above these offices. I rented one online.’

‘We were told this building was secure.’ 

‘Well, I’m sorry to break this to you, but I wasn’t even asked for my name.’ 

The military type looks put upon.

‘I’m going to want to see these flats.’

‘Come up now if you want.’ Emre manages to stand again, glancing just once in Ronson’s direction to see how he is. Odd how detached he feels about that now, as if it had been nothing to do with him. ‘There’s a sort of caretaker on the first floor. I expect he’s got keys.’


	2. Chapter 2

It ends in London in the rain, standing at a plate glass window overlooking the vast mud coloured throughfare that the Thames becomes down here, not quite sure why he’s been called in. 

He was debriefed five months ago in Istanbul, while someone in khaki coloured gloves went through the innumerable small components that prove years of identity; favourites on the BBC website, a beer keg keyring he’s had so long he almost couldn’t remember when they’d asked where he picked it up, a half stamped Caffe Nero card (they took the numbers of the stamps.) screwed up receipts from the depths of his grubby old rucksack. His passport, the pictures on his phone, the razor he hadn’t used for days but uses daily again now. 

It ends with the offer of a job from a woman who should surely be retired herself and he wonders if maybe spymasters are like Oxford dons, too fascinated by their subjects to give them up. 

Or perhaps that’s not the end, perhaps the end is the shattering of concrete, the lurch of a building, the death of an old man, another one past retirement age, who was just beginning to be a friend. 

So many endings but just the one beginning. So many deaths. 

The death of M, and the scramble of a helicopter. 

Bond’s plan worked, strictly speaking. The damage was contained but it’s still a bloody mess. He goes with Tanner because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

M looks stubborn, even in death. Not peaceful at all. At least not to Emre. 

No one seems to know how Bond is. The old man, the gamekeeper, sat with him for a while, but Bond told him to go and do his job. Said there were things to be cleaned up. 

So Bond sits alone and no-one goes near him, and all Q can think of as a conversation starter is ‘I didn’t know you were Scottish’. Trite at best. He thinks of Ronson, who Bond left to die, but it doesn’t make him want to walk away. Perhaps that’s just not something he’s good at. 

It’s still raining. Hammering. He’s nostalgic for heat and bright colours. Or a cool green field and a quiet pub. A pavement cafe with free wireless and muffins and flat whites. It doesn’t really matter. 

Just not here. Not this. 

There is plaster under his feet, dust and larger pieces, gritty against the stone floor. 

Bond doesn’t look round at the noise, although he must be aware of the people in his periphery, the little knot of skinny non-threats grouping, breaking up, and then Q heading towards him. 

He’s immovable as a rock at the end of his own pew, radiating lack of welcome, so Q heads for the one in front, nodding a vague greeting towards the altar before sliding in. 

‘Not a Catholic boy are you?’ 

‘No.’ Q doesn’t elaborate. Nor does he ask questions, although he’s curious about the priest hole. Religion interests him as history, as manners, but this is not the time for intellectual curiosity. Bond has not reasoned himself out of his faith, he’s had it burned from him. 

‘It doesn’t get easier you know.’ Bond says, voice devoid of emotion. ‘Killing gets easier, being shot at. This doesn’t.’

‘Perhaps that’s a good thing.’

‘I’m not looking for your reassurance Quartermaster.’ Q has always thought of fury as a hot thing. 007’s is cold. Granite. Like his eyes. ‘I’m warning you.’ He skims a look down Q’s slight frame. ‘How old are you anyway?’

’26.’ 

‘So you’ve another 40 years of this.’ There’s the same cold satisfaction as before. ‘Probably more. While I’m decommissioned and broken up for scrap.’ He unbends a little. ‘How did you get the short straw anyway?’

‘They’re afraid of you. Except for Tanner of course.’ 

‘And you’re not afraid.’

‘No. Somehow I get the impression you’d rather mock me than attack me.’ 

Bond considers the point. Considers Q, or Emre as Q, taking him in with that same faint amusement. ‘You’ll do.’ He says, and has the satisfaction of seeing Q bristle. 

‘Go and get your injuries seen to before you collapse.’ 

Bond doesn’t bother to respond to that, but he does go.


End file.
